Test of Faith: The Civil War travails of two of Savannah's religious leaders

Chuck Mobley

Saturday

Jul 30, 2011 at 12:15 AM

A slave himself, and the minister to a church with hundreds of slaves as members, the Rev. Ulysses Houston courageously called for an end to the South's peculiar institution throughout the Civil War.

The pastor at First Bryan Baptist Church, Houston was one of the African-American leaders who praised President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation during a meeting on Jan. 1, 1863, said Vaughnette Goode-Walker, one of the authors of "Savannah, Immortal City," a multi-volume account of the Civil War.

That meeting and its prayers for Union success marked the start of "the jubilee," the surreptitious anticipation of freedom by slaves in Savannah, said Goode-Walker, who has put together a walking tour on urban slavery through her company, Footprints of Savannah.

Houston's particular circumstances made the wait for freedom particularly difficult. A butcher by trade, and a nominal slave, he paid his master $50 a month, a huge sum for those days, to be able to work on his own, said Goode-Walker.

He traveled throughout eastern Georgia to purchase cattle. He then butchered the meat and sold it from his shop, which was also his residence, located on the ground floor of a building that fronted the old City Market. The top floor of that building, which is still standing, contained the Bryan Slave Mart.

Near the end of the war, in an interview with a Northern journalist, Houston said he could "hear the groans and cries of mothers and fathers as they marched down those stairs and into the streets in gangs."

Houston was one of the 20 African-American church leaders who met with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Gen. William T. Sherman in January of 1865. The conference led to Special Field Orders No. 15, the famed "40 acres and a mule" edict.

A historical marker in Madison Square, erected by the Georgia Historical Society earlier this year, now commemorates that meeting.

In another pulpit

In 1861, at the onset of the war, British journalist William Howard Russell visited Savannah. He attended a service at Christ Church on Johnson Square, and expressed shock at the aggressive stance on slavery taken by the Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, the Episcopal bishop of Georgia.

"I rather revolted at hearing a Christian prelate advocating the institution on scriptural grounds," Russell wrote in the paper that had sent him to the warring states, "The Times" of London.

Elliott was, at that juncture in the struggle, a vocal champion of slavery and succession. A slaveholder himself, he led the movement to form the Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America.

In a February of 1862 sermon, he said the war was a moral, as well as a political necessity. In August of 1863 Elliott preached that Northerners had profited by selling slaves to Southerners, and had then persecuted the buyers for engaging in slavery.

But, in the fall of 1864, with Southern hopes fading as Sherman won control of Atlanta and Lincoln won re-election, Elliott told his congregation that peace would come soon, but only at God's design.

The next year, with the defeat of the South, Elliott became a voice for reconciliation. "We are not placed here on earth to direct the purposes of God," he preached. "We are the mere instruments created to carry them out."

MAYOR JONES: GOD FAVORS THE SOUTH

In 1861, when the Civil War began, the mayor of Savannah was Charles C. Jones Jr., the son of a prominent Presbyterian minister and coastal Georgia planter.

Writing to his father on why he was sure the South would win, the mayor said: "I cannot bring my mind to entertain even the impression that a God of justice and of truth will permit a blinded, fanatical people, who have already set at naught all rules of equality, of right, and of honor … who set at defiance the right of private property by seizing Negroes … and who without the fear of either God or man in their eyes recklessly pursue a policy subversive of all that is just and pure and high-minded - to triumph in this unholy war."

FROM THE PAGES OF THE 1861 SAVANNAH DAILY MORNING NEWS:

Page 1 of the Thursday, June 13, edition: No Paper Tomorrow - In order to give the employees of our office an opportunity to join in the observance of this day, which has been set apart by the Chief Executive of the Confederate States as a day of Fasting and Prayer, no paper will be issued from this office tomorrow. Our tri-weekly subscribers will be furnished with today's paper.

Page 2 of the Tuesday, June 18, edition: Wanted. Two thousand able bodied men, for the service of the state of Georgia, to serve for three years … Said recruits are needed for such defensive services as the public security in this or neighboring states may demand. They will receive the following pay and allowances: From $11 to $12 pay per month, and, in addition thereto, will be entitled to clothing, fuel, quarters and subsistence. Apply to the Recruiting Officer, at the Oglethorpe Barracks, Liberty Street, Savannah.

Page 2 of the Monday, June 24, edition: The Hottest Day - Yesterday is admitted on all hands to have been the hottest day of this season or any other season within the recollections of most of our inhabitants. In the coolest places in the city, in the shade, with full ventilation, the thermometer stood at 101 degrees most of the day.

Sources: The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, by Robert Manson Myers; Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War, by Jacqueline Jones; The Right Reverend Stephen Elliott: Political Influence and the Protestant Episcopal Church, a 2006 Georgia Southern University masters degree thesis by Paulette Thompson; the New Georgia Encyclopedia; www.loc.gov; Savannah Morning News files.

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